Solace
by Cassie Jamie
Summary: She makes a single, delirious decision.
1. Breaking the Habit

Disclaimer: I don't own anything.  I'm not using this for money.  Yatsa, yatsa, and yatsa.

Author's Note: _Breaking the Habit_ is a song by Linkin' Park.  It's theirs and I'm only borrowing it.

-*-*-

Breaking the Habit

-*-*-

Memories consume

Like opening the wound

I'm picking me apart again

You all assume

I'm safe here in my room

            Sitting back against the bedroom door, blonde hair matted and feet sweating cold.  Thin light, twilight, sparkles on the mirror, gives an eerie feel to the corners.  To the petite southern girl.

            The nightmares still run thick through her fevered mind.

            Not really nightmares.

            Memories of a terrorized youth; dark nights in the humid bayou.  Tall bottles of amber liquid, law documents on the low coffee table.  Younger brothers' crying.

[Unless I try to start again]

            There are strands of hair, white, against the black carpet.  Her hand rests in her locks, and pulls another from the back of her head.

            Speed asked her today why she always wears so much make-up, why she barely ever puts her hair up.

            She'd lied.  Told him the light in her bathroom must be off and it was easier to just leave her hair down.  It was best if he didn't know the truth.

            Best if he doesn't know that she barely sleeps, and when she does, it's tortured and **not** replenishing.  Best that he doesn't know her lank hair is thinning by choice, not by a random genetic.

            She takes her hand away and slams her head against the plywood, maple-stained door with a gut-wrenching thud.

I don't want to be the one

The battles always choose

'Cause I realize

That I'm the one confused

            She remembers her parents' fighting.  Her first word and they argue over what it was; she asks for a rifle for her tenth birthday and they argue; Her prom date and they argue.  Her **choice** to leave Darnell, they scream – until her little brother walked in and got hit by a bottle.  That solidified her decision to leave.

            There's a green bottle on her nightstand and it reeks of tequila.  A half empty vodka dribbles onto her sky-blue sheets.  Ruined silk.

            Like her.

            Anger floods her and she knocks her head against the wood once more.

            She can only recall her father, teaching her to use a list of guns as the "good times".

            The rest of her brain's capacity is full of yelling, crying, cursing, beatings.  Collections of cells to let her see a perfect picture of herself, bottle feeding her youngest brother while trying to brush her teeth.  Her features tear-streaked in the mirror.

            Mind games, R.J. Duquesne played still resonate through her.  Still affect her life like nothing else.

I don't know what's worth fighting for

Or why I have to scream

I don't know why I instigate

And say what I don't mean

I don't know how I got this way

I know it's not alright

So I'm

Breaking the habit

Tonight

            Quietly she stands and her profile echoes in the standing, oval mirror.  She learned by the age of nine to wear multiple layers to hide her thin figure.  Sure, she'd gained weight after she stopped living under her parents' roof.  But she was still so skinny it worried her closest friends.

            She remembers days, not long ago, when she felt normal.  Felt human.  And she can't figure out how exactly she ended up hiding her heart like this.

            Truthfully, her personality's darker, more serious and she trusts only those she loves.  Horatio knows it.  He knows everything and she fights with him almost constantly some days, just to keep her distance from a man who's been more of a father than her own.

            Her mind aches.

            She makes a single, delirious decision.

Clutching my cure

I tightly lock the door

I try to catch my breath again

I hurt much more

Than anytime before

I had no option left again

I'll paint on the walls

'Cause I'm the one at fault

I'll never fight again

And this is how it ends

            She rises from the floor, unsteady on unclothed feet and a headache no aspirin could cure pounding against her skull.

            Entering her bathroom, she absently locks the door.  Somehow, she'd acquired the tequila from it's place.

            No one had ever taught her about drug and alcohol interactions – she learned about them firsthand, watched doctors race to save her daddy's life when he would chase heart meds with whiskey.  Race against the clock to un-poison his body.

            She keeps bottle of sleeping pills, aspirin, midol lined up in size order behind the sink's faucet.  Asthma inhalers, four years old on the small glass shelf.  And right next to them, is an inconspicuous clear tan-brown container with the heart medication that keeps her dear father from dying.  She always kept them handy for the times when his binges brought him home to his 'Lambchop'.

            She begins to down the bottle, shakes the pills now cozy in her fist.  The blonde wonders if slitting her wrists would be quicker, more efficient.  In the bathtub with the shower on, the drain open, and there'd be nothing for people to clean up.

            Only when the bottle cracks on the sick does she awake from her trance of crimson thoughts.  The neck is jaggedly ripped from its body, and her hand bleeds from a dozen papercut cuts.  She sees the liquid, rubs it between her fingertips.

            Runs them over the reflective glass above her sink.

            Cry.

            The word is formed in streaks uneven.  Bloody dripping streaks.

            Her eyes  regain their genuine sparkle.  Crystal as she lifts a single piece of the clear substance from the gray basin.

            The thin skin of her upturned wrist is milk-white and innocent.  Pure.

            Untainted.  Like her soul so long ago.

I don't know what's worth fighting for

Or why I have to scream

But now I have some clarity

To show you what I mean

I don't know how I got this way

I'll never be alright

So I'm

Breaking the habit

Breaking the habit

Tonight

-*-*-

*v* Cassie Jamie *v*

csimiami@cassie-jamie.com


	2. Figure09

Disclaimer: I don't own them.  Obviously.  Nor do I own the lyrics.  Those belong to Linkin Park.

Warning: Character Death, Implied Suicide

-*-*-

Figured.09

-*-*-

**Nothing ever stops all these thoughts**

**And the pain attached to them**

**Sometimes I wonder why this is happening**

            I'd yelled at her.  She'd been sitting on the breakroom couch, her forehead resting on the cushion beside her because her fever was raging and she really didn't have the strength to sit up correctly.  Then, while I tried to ignore her, she begged for me to come home with her.  She didn't want to be alone.

            And I yelled at her.  Because I'm a selfish, stubborn asshole.  Because I was too busy living in my own personal hell to see she was trying to get out of her own, to see she doesn't want to remember anymore the things she lived through.

**It's like nothing I can do**

**Will distract me when**

**I think of how I shot myself in the back again**

**'cause the infinite words I could say**

**Put all the pain you gave me on display**

**But didn't realize**

**Instead of setting it free**

**I took what I hated and made it part of me**

            Seething, I went to our next crime scene.  Horatio was trying to be nice and not say anything about the blow-up I'd had at her.  I think maybe he thought that it was a lover's quarrel, though I could tell he was pissed that I'd chosen to fight with her when Calleigh was ill.

            So I drove down the causeway, never once allowing myself to recall that *I* was the one who'd promised to be there when the memories got to be to much.  I just didn't want to think about her words and her anguish.  Her pain was deeper than mine, harder to deal with because she wasn't just ignored and verbally abused like I was.

            No, her body looks like someone took a white crayon and drew long, jagged lines across her body.  The bite marks of a belt buckle across her back.  A few round spots that are decidedly the mark of a cigarette on her thighs.

            I was still angry at her though.

**[It never goes away]**

            We were in the middle of a multiple homicide when the boss's cellphone rang.  Annoying little blips of the Nextel until he picked up, letting off some steam at the person on the other end.

            Then he stopped dead.

            Eric and I looked at each other while he said 'um hum' a few times, then declared that he'd be right over.  I don't think I could ever have been prepared for the answer when I asked him what was going on.

            His lips formed the words, but my eyes dazed and focused.  My hearing was ghosted with white noise.  I almost didn't understand when he told us our fourth member, our fourth CSI – our *friend* - was in the ER.  For trying to take her own life.

            And then as an afterthought almost, my mind tacked on that she must be damn close to the underworld if the hospital staff is starting to look for people to contact.

            If I had been there, gone like she'd asked…

            Can't think that way right now.  Not when she's in pain, when she needs us so badly even I feel the ache in my chest.

            Pale darkness makes tracks through my brain, however, and the seed is planted – this is my fault.  She asked for me to go home with her because she was *afraid* to be alone.  And I yelled at her instead.

**Hearing you name**

**The memories come back again**

**I remember when it started happening**

**I'd see you in every though I had and then**

**The thoughts slowly found words attached to them**

**And I knew as they escaped away I was committed myself to them**

**And every day I regret those things**

**'cause now I see**

That I took what I hated and made it a part of me 

            I drive like a mad man through the city, the second Hummer's behind me, but I'm too wrapped in my own thoughts.

            She told me once that she'd learned to just let everything go to let it roll off her back like nothing had happened.  Then I caught her crying in the locker room, banging her head against the metal.  Her scalp was bleeding and I realized – Calleigh never lets anything go.

            One of the things we have in common – no one really knows who we really are.

            No one knows about how much her father really drank…drinks still.  No one knows that she keeps a liquor cabinet well-stocked in her bedroom closet or that she's on tranquilizers so she's calm enough to sleep at night.

            To sleep through the emptiness.  The recollections of raising her brothers while her mother was in and out of institutions; fighting about her every move since she was the only girl in the brood.  Not one member of her small town ever noticed the purple bruises, the lack-of-weight she carried.

            But they all noticed when she wanted to bring a black man as her prom date.

            That was the night her father grabbed her by her hair and smacked her head against the wall.  Since then, I only have to follow that sickening, vomit-inducing sound to find her in the apartment.

            And I hate myself for not thinking of all this when she cried on her knees for me to go with her.

**[It never goes away]**

            As I walk into the waiting room I see various people from the lab.  Techs, detectives, civilians who come in to help out at times.  I wonder if they can see through me, see through the transparent grief I've mustered.

            Can see through to the secrets I hold inside of me.  Her secrets and my own.

            They all pat me on the back and tell me it's okay to cry, but it's not because I failed her and I won't let myself get relief from the pain that's building in my gut.

            Then H walks in, eyes red, and wraps his arms around me.  I ask if she's gone.

**And now**

**You've become a part of me**

**You'll always be right here**

**You've become a part of me**

**You'll always be my fear**

**I can't separate myself from what I've done**

**I've given up a part of me**

**I've let myself become you**

            He tightens his grip and replies.  She'd had alcohol in her bloodstream, the cuts were deep.  She was in cardiac arrest in the ambulance.

            The answer is yes then.

            And I punch him, because he's holding me back from hitting myself.  He knows it, lets me assail him, scream out my bitter hatred.

            Calleigh can't be gone!  Can't be gone.  Just cannot.

            Reality glares at me as Laura strangles out a cry, launches herself into Eric's arms.  She wants to know why, and I find myself asking the same question.

            But reality still stares me in the eyes because they're taking her body out of the trauma room.  She's not supposed to be on the gurney.  Not supposed to be covered by the sheet like a dead body.  No!

            Horatio grips my waist and bicep in an effort to hold me back.  He succeeds because I both want to grab her, shake her awake, but I don't want to look onto her lifeless features once bright with fake-hope that I fed off of like the leech I am.

**Get away from me**

**Gimme my space back**

**You gotta just go**

**Everything comes down to memories of you**

**I've kept it in but now I'm letting you know**

**I've let you go**

**Get away from me**

            Horatio takes me home.  Talks to me the whole way, but never once says her name.  And I know he wants to.  He just can't because the tears are threatening to fall.

            The directions I've given him though…they take me to my apartment, but I can't stay *there* tonight.  Because I moved in with my beautiful girlfriend a month ago under the secrecy of nighttime.

            A hand slips into my pocket as the redhead stumbles over words.  There's a ring box with the diamond band I had bought her.

            I'd planned on proposing.  Ironic.  Now I'll bury her instead of wedding her.

            He starts to put the H2 in reverse.  I stop him with a few words, and get out.  I race up the stairs to the third floor and make it inside.  There are people there, standing in the bathroom.  I tell them to get out.  They ask who I am.  I tell them to get out.

            The boss walks in; they realize who I must be and exit momentarily.

            Her form is outlined by red because she'd laid down on the crisp tiles of the floor.  I can tell where her ear and cheek contacted.

            The glass in the sink.  Stinks of tequila.  Tequila I'd bought for tonight when I sat her down on our couch to present her with the ring.

            I track my eyes up and I see it.  Her last message.  A word for what she never did, couldn't do, and won't ever do.

            Cry.

            So I do it.  Because the world is cruel, because people die at their own hand or someone else's.  Because the only person who can protect me is floating on some distant cloud while Horatio holds my wrists to prevent me from joining her.

**I've let myself become you**

**I've let myself become lost inside these thoughts of you**

**Giving up a part of me**

**I've let myself become you**

-*-*-

*v* Cassie Jamie *v*

csimiami@cassie-jamie.com


	3. One Step Closer

Disclaimer: Not mine.  Lyrics belong to Linkin Park.

-*-*-

One Step Closer

-*-*-

**I cannot take this anymore**

**I'm saying everything I've said before**

**All these words they make no sense**

**I find bliss in ignorance**

**Less I hear the less you'll say**

**But you'll find that out anyway**

            He asks me the next morning, after I've had to care for him as I do my nephew, if I think he could have stopped it.  And I'm not really sure how to answer that.  Do I believe she'd still be alive if someone had been with her?  Yes.  But would she have come to same end at a different time?  Probably.

            So I tell him the truth – it was a long time in coming.  She deserved peace.

            Tim sniffs from the bed and I press my back up against the side of it from the floor.  I dare not leave him, though I wish desperately I could take him from _this_ room.  This item of furniture that smells faintly like vanilla washed in the pungent aroma of alcohol.  But he's fixed his fisted around the edge of the mattress and he won't let it go.

            He's hurt so badly; misses her more than I thought he ever would.

            Quietly, another question.  Why haven't I cried for her yet?

            Because I can't grieve yet.  I have to take care of him and Eric and the entire fucking lab.  They cannot function and I know it already – twice Laura's called me, three times for Tyler.  Eight from Yelena or Ray Jr., both worried sick about me.

            I realize I've been silent.  His dark eyes – dark like his broken soul – bore into me with intensity, waiting patiently for an answer while he fumbles with the silver engagement ring.

            Can't cry until it's real.  Until I see her in the casket in that godforsaken white dress she wore to the Christmas Ball.  I tell him.

            Speed smiles briefly, as I assume he recalls that night.  She was radiant in that dress…like the fucking heaven's angel she is now.

  
**Just like before…  
  
**

            Eric switches off guard with me around noon.  He chokes when he sees the closed bathroom door – the scent of the dried blood wafts out from under it.  No, more than just that smell.  It's the heavy lilt of death that enchants the entire space.  But he eventually forces himself to come into the room completely and sits down on the edge of the bed.

            The person we are trying to watch rolls over to grab her pillow before his friend can destroy the last traces lingering on the fabric.

            My memory takes a minute and when I reawaken, I'm in the hallway of the building.  Back to the wall, and staring at the number 31.  I remember when she got that apartment and joked about it.  Homicide Hall she called it.

            Next to her door are flowers.  Yellow tulips wrapped in black paper with a note I will not read.  A cross with Jesus Christ in his crown of thorns and low-slung cloth-covering is balanced between several of the bouquets.

            And I feel my eyes water.  But I won't cry yet, because I'm the one who has to be strong for this moment or everything will fall apart.

            I breathe as best I can, yet her eyes flash in my memory and a smile that broke many a boy's heart dig into me.  I have to get out.  Get air.  These walls are so close…

            Slamming through the front doors of her building, I collapse to my knees.  Huff the air like it were a drug.  Like the drugs I lost Raymond to.  Fucking hell!  First my mother, than my brother, a divorce, now I've lost Calleigh and that weighs on me like an anvil on my shoulders.

            I shouldn't have sent her home alone.  I shouldn't have let Tim argue with her when all she wanted was his company.

            A thousand what if's to fill a lifetime.  And it shouldn't have had to come at the price of our Bullet Girl.

  
**Everything you say to me**

**Takes me one step closer to the edge**

**And I'm about to break**

**I need a little room to breathe**

**'cause I'm one step closer to the edge**

**And I'm about to break**

            The lab is silent.  Well, not really.  The machines whirr on with the evidence of cases I can no longer process, but there's no talking, no whispering, no jokes like normal.

            Someone sobs; Laura's burned-out.  I can see it in her eyes when she lifts her head to look at me.  Asks if she can go home because she cannot stop crying.  Everything reminds her, me – _us_ – of where we'd see the blonde.  Standing ramrod straight and firing downrange or bent of her scope to stare at striations I never understood but she was damn near giddy to work with.

            I let the DNA tech leave.  Start to climb the stairs to make an announcement.

            There's no need to tell them all that one of the CSI's is dead and gone.  There's no need to tell them she's waiting in the morgue for Jones to come in because Alexx just cannot autopsy her own friend.  Everyone already knows.

            Just…I spit out that all cases are on hold, I rub my face so the shame-red coloring me can be explained away while I tell them that those who want to take the day can go.

            There's a mad dash of the tear-streaked and anguished, whispering to each other.  A few of the women hold hands; one is being supported by Tyler.  They pass me and brush fingers on my shoulders.  Offer comfort words.

            Then the lab's nearly empty, and those who've stay won't look up at me.  Somehow, I drift from department to department, searching out any remnant of her left in the building.  Her indentation in my stiff leather couch where she slept for a little while yesterday; her labcoat hung on the hook in Ballistics; her locker, a time case of her life here.

            The lock slips open under my shaky fingers.  There's a dozen pictures taped to the interior of the door – the team, her brothers, her last birthday party, a picture from her high school prom.  A hasty stack of CDs, hand lotion, and a journal with a change of clothes and a pair of boots.  Some Tylenol packets and a letter from Speed.

  
**I find the answers aren't so clear**

**Wish I could find away to disappear**

**All these thoughts they make no sense**

**I find bliss in ignorance**

**Nothing seems to go away**

**Over and over again  
  
**

            Adele runs into the room and stops short when she sees me, crumpled on the floor with a picture of her and I when we first met in my hands.  Her eyes are red-rimmed.  She sees the picture; there's a sharp intake of air.

            She remembers that day too.  The day I walked into the lab with this petite mass of energy cloaked by blonde hair and black clothes.  Laughter infectious while she told everyone who would listen about her home in Darnell.  Calleigh had nearly bowled the Latina detective over that first shift.  They were friends ever since.

            We stand there in silence, each sniffling.

            Go home, she tells me.  I retort the same statement.

            I return to staring at the picture.  Smiling then, though not entirely genuine, but still smiling with a piece of her soul.  One of the other photos loosens and falls into my lap.  She's looking into Speed's eyes, holding his hands while invading his personal space though he doesn't care.

            They were happy, content with each other.

            It's ruined now and I can't fix this.  I'm supposed to be the one who fixes things, brings closure.  That's my job, isn't it?

            So why is my lab deserted, Eric and Tim in tears, and I refuse to release her image from me?  Why does this hurt so much it trembles in my belly?  Because instead of being some stranger, it was one of our own.  And instead of it being a murder, it was suicide – and there's nothing any of can ever do to extract the guilt of knowing we didn't tell her we loved her as often as we should have or coaxed her fears away when she needed us.

**…Shut up when I'm talking to you…**

-*-*-

*v* Cassie Jamie *v*

csimiami@cassie-jamie.com

-*-*-

Trinity: I know it's darker.  Because I think this one is more the absence of hope, but in Ancillae things are starting to look up.

jo: I don't plan on ever stopping my writing so don't worry!  :-D  And I loved Carry On, Chin Up, Stiff Upper Lip.

Raven: I updated Ancillae.  Now review it or e-mail me or something!  I'm glad you liked this fic though.

irismoon: Sorry about the lack of H/C, but I think the dynamic of S/C is a bit more interesting based on their pasts.


	4. Papercut

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Papercut

-*-*-

Why does it feel like night today?

Something in here's not right today

Why am I so uptight today?

Paranoia's all I got left

I don't know what stressed me first

Or how the pressure was fed/but

I know just what it feels like

To have a voice in the back of my head

            Days have passed in blur formation, melding together with no determinable separation.  Because Calleigh's not here anymore to save us from monotony.  She's not here to stop Horatio from blaming himself, to make Speed speak.  She's not here to make the lab do what they're employed to do nor to head off the administrative honchos when they start with the bullshit that he's not fit for duty; that none of us should be working but there's no one else to do the work.

            Speed…he's deteriorated so badly we can't get through anymore.  He won't ask questions like he did before, won't tell us if he's hungry, and refuses to pay attention when we speak to him.  He doesn't do much beyond sit on the couch, a picture of the blonde in his hands and watch endless loops of home videos.

            Hell, he's pissed himself a few times in the days prior because he wouldn't…_couldn't…stand up._

            The funerals today and while I wander through the rooms of my apartment, I see the last remnants of my friend's existence among the knickknacks, the photo splashed walls – A Christmas gift from last year of a glass angel, a picture of she and I having a picnic together, the blanket on my couch she bought me during her last trip home to Darnell.

            Not so long ago she slept in my living room with eyes glassy after picking her father up from his bar hideaway, crying because she'd started running a fever that made her frustrated.  My couch still smells like her, emits the soft feminine scent into the air.

            Damn it.

            No tears.  I promised I wouldn't cry.  Promised…I must…I must…

            Oh, fuck it all!  One promise – one moronic little agreement with the blonde girl.  Now my best friend is being put in the goddamn earth today and she should be planning her wedding.  Picking out a dress, flowers, and invitations.  All the little details that she and Laura talked about over ice cream during lunch breaks.

            There's tear tracks on my cheeks.  I didn't realize I'd started, but I cannot stop now.

            Why didn't Tim just _go home_ when she asked?  Why didn't she say some thing to us?  Hell, why didn't H send her to a friggin' doctor if she was so sick?

            My mind screams back the answers, screams back the saddening fact that Tim was too wrapped in himself.  That we wouldn't have _heard_ her if she'd said something, because we didn't think she was capable of this act of self-hatred.

            We loved the person that she presented and didn't want her to be anything but the precocious southern belle with a sweetness for ballistics.

It's like a face that I hold inside

A face that awakes when I close my eyes

A face watches every time I lie

A face that laughs every time I fall

            Laid out in a white dress…one that displays the scars with prominence.  Her voice no longer telling stories, no longer answering questions.  It is forever quieted and silenced.

            _'Calleigh's not here right now.'_

            Her answering machine's greeting.  Sweet natured and giddy-happy-content, but now…now…that one sentence states it all.  Since I don't think she ever was 'here'.  Never really was as she presented herself.

            And I miss her all the more because I didn't truly know her, and I never will get that chance to look beneath all the layers to _see_ her.  To know her as she was meant to be known.

            Horatio walks over to me, grim-faced and bag-eyed, when I enter the parlor earlier than most.

            He hasn't slept.  There's a surprise.  I doubt he's had a good night sleep since this started as he is the one taking care of Tim.  He asks me if I want to pay my respects first or wait until the other mourners have done so.

            I'll go now, I respond, I want to get it over with.

            The boss nods at me, walks with me as I make my way down the aisle to the white-and-silver casket.  The non-descript earth angel nestled into it.  He scalpels himself from my side and half-collapses into a Victorian-style couch against the wall, then rubs Speed's back gently.  Our colleague doesn't even deviate his gaze from the wall.

            I won't think about that right now.  The last think I need to do is fall into the same bottomless pit of despair, because I will never clamber my way out of it.

            I don't think the brunet will manage to escape either.  Only if she were here…

            Delko!  Pay attention to what's in front of you, Eric.  Pay attention to the what-is and not what-should-have-been.

[And watches everything]

            She looks so delicate and natural, like she were merely sleeping.  Napping between cases.  Blonde hair haloed against the baby-blue satin pillow.  Like the pajamas she keeps…_kept_ hidden under her bed.

            The sobs come unexpectedly, bright against the harrowing dim light of the room.

            I knew about her father.  Knew about all the things he'd done to her, but I could never get through that wall that she built around herself to protect her heart from being battered again.  That right was reserved for Tim Speedle.

            I reach out and trace her fingers cold.  Ice.  Where there was once warmth.

            Oh, Cal.  I wish I had more time to explain how special you were to me.  But there's no time anymore.  It was cut desperately short by the pain only you fathomed.  That dream we all had of you is shattered glass, hopes for the future wisps of nothingness.

            _'Look at what's left.  Look at the sparkling glass, Eric.  See what's left behind?'_

So I know that when it's time to sink or swim

That the face inside is hearing me/Right underneath my skin

            I can't stay here any longer, standing beside her final home.

            Turn, walk away, settle in beside my sister who drove me because I was too upset to it myself.  She wraps me in her arms, whispers that Calleigh looks beautiful.

            She should be beautiful and _alive_.

            Horatio's kneeling in front of me, asks to know if I want to sit with Tim.  I nod.  My best friend is gone and our boss has yet to grieve; he didn't get to feel the reality of this realm we live in until now.  I can see it in those broken blue-eyes that he's able to see that she is not coming back.

            His protégée is taken from him.  He's brokenhearted – his mother, his brother, his mentor, his student.  All taken and now he's defiantly alone with a heart no one will ever get through to.

            I'll sit with Speed, but only if you promise to say goodbye to her.  If you'll say goodbye and cry because I know you want to.  I instruct, as his outward demeanor starts to crumble like chalk in a classroom.  He chokes when he provides me with leverage to rise to my feet.  Drift to my coworker – my _friend_ – while the redhead drags his feet.

            I dry the drops rolls down my chin, attempt to induce a conversation with him about passive subjects.  Sports, work, weather.  But in this place I can't stop myself from commenting on the flowers and the dress she will adorn eternally.

            He shifts and turns his gaze to me, insentient expression on all his features, in all his movements, and speaks even though his voice is a croak.

            I should have gone home with her.  He says.

            Push back the rising bile, resist the urge to scream that it's a little fucking obvious now that she'd still be breathing if he done so.  Instead I reply with: It's over with, Tim.  Heaven has her now and she'll be safe.  No more pain.

            _'No more ignorance.  No more people who couldn't save her when she needed saving.'_

            His face immediately changes, yet he's still holding back the torrent I know will inevitably come.

            Cry.  I order as though I have the authority, and he snaps his attentions to me once more.

It's like I'm/Paranoid lookin' over my back

It's like a/Whirlwind inside of my head

It's like I/Can't stop what I'm hearing within

It's like the face inside is right beneath my skin

            I see the pure alarm, hear his breathing become more rapid as we both learn firsthand that Horatio Caine _does cry._

            He's getting more jittery.  His hands dig into the couch cushions, his feet tap out a rhythm against the carpeted floor, and his eyes flick from person to person entering this room.

            Speed's searching for an escape route.  He wants to run…run from the pain handed out to him at every turn of his life; run from the memories that keep him up at night and we never ask what they are because he mumbles in his sleep the name of his best friend.  Cries for the souls now angelic.

            Flash, he's up and racing and Horatio half-wrestles, half-yells until the New York-born man settles his nerves and ends his struggles.

            The parlor shrinks down.  Shrinks down until it's just me, the redhead, Tim, the body of the person who was the glue of our team.

            H sinks to the floor, arms still heavy with our colleague and his face wet with shedding tears.  He holds out a hand, gestures that it's okay if I come over.  Which I greedily accept the invitation, collapse heavy against the offered shoulder.

            I miss her already.  I say to no one except myself.  I can't remember her laugh.

            _'You'll forget, Eric.  It's the way it goes.'_

            I don't want to forget!  I don't want to let these images and sounds of her evaporate from my life or my mind.  She _has_ to be remembered!  Cannot let her become a singular grain of sand on the beaches of time when she deserves to be a boulder.

            Someone's whispering, a voice familiar but not routine and I open my eyes to see the owner rubbing the supposed-to-be-fiancé's back.  His father trying to soothe, but not succeeding against the abrasive sounds coming from his mouth.

I know I've got a face in me

Points out all my mistakes to me

You've got a face on the inside too and

Your paranoia's probably worse

I don't know what set me off first but I know what I can't stand

            We sit there for some time, until the tears have dried to a cheek-sheen.  Tim's fallen asleep and H's trying to move the two of us because his legs have fallen sleep.  The other people flux in and out, down to the current trickle.

            H holds my hand and steadily strokes our sleeping friend's arm.  Ready to get up? He inquires, tone husky and thick.

            I don't answer, rising to my feet.  Speed jars to consciousness, asks to go.

            Look around at everyone present and my mother says she'll stay behind to help with whatever needs to be done.  The offer made and taken, we leave with tight grip on the brunet as we drag him bodily to the Hummer.

            The though comes unbidden to my mind – Calleigh used to drive our H2s better than any of us.  Could power through traffic, but never even ghost a pedestrian.  She was the best.  Her jeep as well.

            Like when she took me with her on a road trip during Christmas to visit her brother Jaikob in northern Louisiana and took me off-roading.

            So much for the demure spirit I had thought she possessed.

            _'That's what I like, Eric.  I like going against the grain – keeps life interesting.'_

            Is that what she told me?  I can't recall if it were her or if it were one of my other friends, but then…she was the only one I ever had meaningful conversations with.  Conversations with mock-smiles and choice words that someone would mistake for actual happiness.

            Now I see that it was all a bitter shadow of who she could have been.

Everybody acts like the face of the matter is

I can't add up to what you can

But everybody has a face that they hold inside

A face that awakes when they close their eyes

A face watches every time they lie

A face that laughs every time they fall

            H pulls into his driveway, knowing that I cannot go home and be alone in the coming night air.  Gently, he stirs our sleeping-again-friend.  Tells him that we're spending the night with him, hear the jingle of handcuffs as they bobble from a belt hoop while he jumps out to ensure that Speed doesn't make a break for it.

            I stumble toward the door, open it to be immediately faced with a poster-sized black-n-white photo of all of us.  Our boss stands dead-center with Calleigh and Tim to one side while I and Megan stand to the other.  I never understood why he made us take that picture, I doubt I ever will, but I think I'll have to ask him for a copy to hang in my home to pay homage to the fallen.

            Sit down, Eric.  He commands, shoving me toward his living room.  Tosses me into a chair, before placing Tim onto the matching couch…and surprises a pair of cuffs on to our colleagues thinning wrist.  The other end is attached to the wall the couch is pushed to; a ring in the wall that a piece of art once hung from.

            I know which piece is gone.  The one Calleigh gave him for his birthday this year; A painting she did herself of a section of the vibrant Miami beaches at sunset.

            Tim jingles, screams out that we have no right to hold him here.

            All this…because the dream died.

[And watches everything]

            Because she's dead.

            Never to solve another crime, never to put away another criminal, never to take another road trip on a whim to see her nephews.  Never to coach me when I have to say something to Laura but don't know how to word it.

            Nor to heal the frazzled nerves at the end of the day.

            She's not here to stop Speed from wanting to run like a fucking hurricane away from us.  And the reality hits me hard as I sit in my boss's home – there'll be another funeral one day.  No, I don't think it'll be sometime soon…it'll be once we let Tim go back out in to the world, once he's fathomed how to act with some semblance of normalcy.

            Then the call will come, inevitable.  We'll ask why and know the answer, refusing to speak it aloud.  Bury him beside his wistful…wistful…girlfriend?  No.  Fiancée?  She wasn't yet, though they immerse her in the brackish Earth with his ring adorning her finger.

            He survived the loss of his best friend in New York.  He won't survive this.

So you know that when it's time to sink or swim

That the face inside is watching you too/Right inside your skin

            The sun sets against the rippling waters.  I can see it through the large plate glass windows, see H standing with hands in their magnetic position dressed in lounge pants and a white shirt.  His head is bowed in the twilight, and the glow coruscating his tussled hair.  And the soft shake in his torso alerts to the grieving.

            Tim snores delicate, one arm still chained.

            I lean further into the loveseat, reiterating the thought from earlier:

            She was the glue that held everything together, and in the void of her presence, everything is falling apart.  Dissolving, smashed, unmade…shattered beyond recognition.

            And I don't care anymore if things are re-done.

            Because I saw the paper on Horatio's kitchen counter, the resignation waiting to be folded and mailed; know that we didn't lose one CSI – we lost two, and the second is biding his time; that I'm nearing thirty and about to make a massive career move.

            Change since I know in my heart every vic who comes in with blonde hair and a petite frame, I'll start crying and won't stop.  She ingrained herself into our lives so deep that taking her has ripped a single string from the tapestry that is life…unraveling everything and leaving us staring at bare walls.

The sun goes down

I feel the light betray me

-*-*-

*v* Cassie Jamie *v*

csimiami@cassie-jamie.com


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